Trick of the Light
by ratchetblack
Summary: An unusual patient brought into the trauma center piques House's curiosity. Nobody expected him to bite...


As he stood at the end of the main hallway in the Emergency Department, House vaguely remembered that there was a reason he had never worked in the ER. He just couldn't think of it at the moment, staring blankly as he was at the screaming, bloodied man being gurneyed into a holding room.

Why were his clothes-- his long sleeves and the front of his jacket-- shredded? Not just torn, but actually shredded, with clearly separate claw marks at least one inch apart from each other.

House tilted his head, squinting. Princeton did not have wild animals that big. This bore investigation.

"What's going on?" he called out, as the surgeons began to take over and one of the EMTs broke off from the general chaos, slipping off his red-smeared gloves.

"We were told it was a large animal attack, but we're kind of skeptical about the attack part at the moment," the EMT said, shrugging. "Looks more like the guy got buzzed off something and then messed with something he shouldn't have."

"Then... you should be asking what drug, and what animal," said House, gazing intently at the patient.

"Unless some wild mountain lion decided to take a vacation in the city, I'm clueless," muttered the EMT, moving off to return to his duties.

House glanced at his retreating back, then at the closed door of the patient's room. He heard the screams dull, then stop. Sedation had kicked in.

* * *

"Why are we suddenly dealing with a trauma patient in Diagnostics?"

House paused, mid-letter, marker in the midst of the second "T" in "ANIMAL ATTACK," and wheeled around to glare at Chase. "Because he's an _interesting_ trauma patient, that's why."

"So this guy gets ripped up by some wild animal that shouldn't even be in the city, and you take an interest in him?" asked Foreman, skeptic. "That's a case for Animal Control to take up with whoever let that thing run around, not something that we should be getting involved in."

"Patient was screaming and flailing as the EMTs rolled him in," noted House, more to himself than to his team, as he finished writing "ATTACK" and added "DELIRIUM" underneath it.

"Not from the pain?" asked Cameron.

"Presumably not," House replied flippantly. "If it was from the pain, it wouldn't make him interesting."

"What about the drugs in his system?" asked Foreman.

"Plain marijuana doesn't have that much of a kick. His brain should've been baked, not fried."

"Do you think he was infected with something from the--" began Chase.

"No and no. The blood was still nice and fresh when he came in-- bonus points to the EMTs for an extra-speedy delivery-- and no known zoonotic disease sets in that quickly," said House without turning around.

Cameron rolled her eyes. "Time for the Scooby Gang to get on the case," she muttered, picking up her folder and leaving without another word.

Chase and Foreman stared after her, mouths open in surprise, as House finally turned around to contemplate the departure of his only female employee.

"That time of the month?" he asked with a smirk, directing the question at Chase, who blushed far, far too predictably and sank down into his seat.

* * *

House stepped into the room and took in the patient at a glance-- bandages up and down his arms, a plaster cast on one foot. An oxygen mask. Gigantic bloody splotch on the front of his chest where the blood had seeped through his dressings.

"Don't you look nice," mumbled House, drawing closer.

The patient groaned slightly, his eyes darting about behind closed lids. House stood quietly next to the bed, looking briefly at the monitors. They all showed weak vital signs-- too weak. The patient wasn't expected to last the night, given the severity of his wounds, but who knew?

Cuddy, standing at the door, crossed her arms. "House, what are you doing here? This is the trauma ward."

"Aww, you mean I can't even visit?" asked House, arranging his face in a dejected expression.

"_Trauma._" repeated Cuddy, enunciating each syllable.

"Yes, thank you, I know what that is--"

"Meaning there's nothing for you to diagnose here."

"Are you sure? Because this guy right here--" House held up one limp wrist and pointed down at the unconscious man on the bed-- "has foot-long, inch-apart slash marks _through his chest_. How cool is _that_?"

Cuddy's retort was cut off when the patient suddenly shot to wakefulness, arching his back like a strung bow and letting out a strangled cry that was muffled by the oxygen mask. The monitors all began beeping rapidly as the man started yelling incoherently.

"Whoa!" exclaimed House, stepping back in time to avoid one flailing arm. "Where was all this a second ago?" Two nurses rushed into the room, one injecting a dose of sedative into the patient's IV, the other trying to talk comfortingly to the panicking man, holding lightly to his wrist.

The comforting nurse yelped in surprise as she was shoved away, and reeled backwards into a cart, knocking a stack of fresh white dressings onto the floor.

"Hey!" shouted the other nurse, backing away from the patient, who had gone from garbled yelling to actual growling, face twisted into a snarl. In his disoriented state, the patient's oxygen mask slipped off and he began choking and gasping for air.

House, being the closest person, grabbed the loose mask and was about to reposition it over the patient's nose and mouth--

But even though he was short of breath, the man snarled wordlessly, lips drawn back from his teeth in a predatory threat. House had only a moment to be alarmed before the patient lunged upwards violently and sank his teeth into the flesh of House's forearm.

House screamed.

* * *

"What do you mean he _died_?" demanded House, a few minutes later. Wilson was cleaning and dressing the bite wound for him, cotton swab and antiseptic in hand.

"What else could I possibly mean?" snapped Wilson irritably, pressing harder on the wound than was absolutely necessary and eliciting a wince from his friend. "He flatlined about five seconds after Cuddy manhandled you out of the room."

"Why? How?" Funny how it all seemed to have blurred together, as House attempted to recall the scene.

"Wouldn't you know better than I would?" asked Wilson, tying up the bandage. The tone of his voice was flat and uninterested, his motions overly professional-- the symptoms of not enough sleep and more than enough stress. The oncologist had been on call for almost the entire day and most of the day previous, caring for three consecutive patients who'd metastasized within days of each other, a rather airheaded young mother who'd attempted to bring her wailing young son into the clinic when he'd clearly needed to go to the emergency room, and finally House, who'd managed to top off his week by getting _bitten_. "You were in the room. I wasn't."

House yanked his arm out of Wilson's grip, trying to finish tying the bandage himself. "Hey, don't be jealous you missed all the fun," he said. Wilson sighed and made a grab for House's arm so he could finish wrapping the bandage. House evaded him, narrowing his eyes in mock suspicion. "Have you synchronized with Cameron and Cuddy? Is that why everyone's snapping at me today?"

Wilson ignored him, straight-faced (an expression perfected through years of overexposure to House's odd remarks), and caught his arm in a tight grip, focused intently on the flapping end of the bandage. "The patient _died_, House. Somehow I fail to see how fun that is."

House pulled his arm away again. "Not like it was my fault," he said, shrugging as he used his other hand to pin the bandage in place, and wondered curiously at the lack of pain.

* * *

The case of the mauled patient's bizarre death was, after a few days, completely forgotten in Diagnostics, and in fact, in most of the rest of the hospital. The proper authorities had taken over the case and had ruled it an accident, and nothing else had come of it, much to House's chagrin.

"What are you doing?" asked Foreman, pausing as he entered the diagnostics office to find House standing at the whiteboard, doodling aimless loops while gnawing absently on the marker cap.

"Hrmph?" said House around his mouthful, turning halfway to look at his subordinate with raised eyebrows.

The younger doctor stared blankly for a moment at the absurdity of the tableau, and then made a mental note to himself not to use the blue marker for a while. Perhaps it would be better not to ask.

* * *

_two weeks later..._

House scowled as he stared at the whiteboard, rolling the pill around in his mouth before crunching down on it. The sound of the hard crunch made everyone in the room jump.

Foreman looked at Chase, who looked back at him with wide eyes, then turned to look at Cameron. All three had practically identical startled expressions, which would have been funny if House had bothered to look at them.

"What was _that_?" said a voice by the door. The three underlings turned to the door to find Wilson standing there, having just opened the door in time to hear the strange noise.

House grumbled something unintelligible and wrote "lupus" on the board. He paused. Then he irritably wiped it away.

"It's never lupus," he said, more to himself than to his team, and began pacing in a crooked circle.

As Foreman, Chase, and Cameron rejoined the discussion with varying insights on the new patient, Wilson noticed House pivoting around another time before settling, with a little whuff of a sigh, into his chair.

* * *

House's diet hadn't exactly been at the pinnacle of health to begin with, but at least it had been predictable-- either a reuben sandwich or whatever Wilson was having that day. Witnessing his best friend wolf down a steak, Wilson decided, was somewhere between unsettling and downright scary.

"House, why are you--" Wilson blanked momentarily on how to avoid asking too bluntly what he was thinking. Well, it was House, after all, so tact didn't count for much, but... he wasn't even using his knife to cut it. House had his fork jabbed into the steak and was gnawing at it with a single-minded determination, using the fingers of his other hand to steady his meal. House wasn't usually... _this_ weird.

"Whum?" asked House, looking up, totally clueless as to the reason for Wilson's slight agitation. Wilson thought he might've meant to ask "What?" but the mouthful of steak had obscured the word.

"... Never mind," muttered Wilson, going back to his chicken salad, and tried valiantly to ignore how the sound of House continuing to eat made the hairs on the backs of his arms stand on end.

Wait.

Were those _canines_?

Wilson gaped for a moment and the bite of food on his fork fell off and plopped back into his bowl. Wilson busied himself with cleaning up the scattered bits of food and wondered desperately why House was forgoing even his characteristic snide commentary for his meal.

No. Those... couldn't have been canines. Probably just a trick of the light.


End file.
